


Weeds and Seeds

by handschuhmaus



Series: Marginalia [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Thursday Next - Jasper Fforde
Genre: Allusions and references, Gen, I could not resist the temptation of John Smith, alternate perspective, yes that is.. whatever you call Thursday's universe's version of Pterry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 10:01:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2728217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor goes undercover as a SpecOps agent. </p>
<p>Alternate perspective for a scene in <em>Lost In A Good Book</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Weeds and Seeds

**Author's Note:**

> Dialogue quoted extensively from _Lost In A Good Book_ \--however, it amounts to portions of just over one page. 
> 
> I felt the situation called for my actually least favorite Doctor, the perennially popular Ten, as alas, it sounds like neither Eleven nor Five to me, but this is an alternate universe Doctor anyway so...
> 
> I can't say I remember all the details from this marvelously convoluted series (let alone keep straight which book they're from!), but, the Doctor being a time traveller who knows something of Thursday's future, some references to events post- _Lost In A Good Book_ and especially this scene in particular occur. I've read through _The Woman Who Died A Lot_ , though I don't _think_ there are references to it or _One of Our Thursdays Is Missing_ here. Bits from _Well of Lost Plots_ and _Something Rotten_ are fairly likely; _First Among Sequels_ maybe slightly less so.

"Hullo!" a human greeted the Doctor as he extracted a cardboard box containing assorted esoteric instruments the likes of which were unlikely to be seen on Terra in this timeline for at least--oh, three centuries--if you excluded the Master's rogue actions in leaking time travel technology and causing a paradox which from an extra-quaddimensional point of view had collapsed (but you couldn't tell the humans that)--from the car he was using. "New SpecOps?" she asked.

It was time to try out his disguise as a SpecOps member. "Er, yes," the Doctor replied, remembering to proffer his hand and then that he would have to get the box out of the way to do so and thus putting it down. "John Smith--Weeds & Seeds," he announced himself without a hitch. But only her response would tell whether his disguise was believable. 

One of her eyebrows rose--and it looked a very familiar eyebrow, hadn't he seen it before? "Unusual name," she remarked, shaking his hand. "I'm Thursday Next." Oh--yes! That Thursday Next! The famous LiteraTec who would--wait, had he confused the timeline again? It was a bit difficult to keep straight especially as despite her limited ability to perceive anything aside from a linear timeline, things had and would get pretty _timey-wimey_ around her and he just had to hope desperately that his presence wouldn't derail her timeline because he was investigating an apparently quite unrelated anomaly and Romana _had_ said it wouldn't... He really did not like being without his phone box TARDIS, but unfortunately that was the sentence he got for ruining the treaty summit (at least he supposed that was the term in English...), prolonging the war to triple the length it theoretically could have been inasmuch as a war fought throughout time had a length, and-- _quite unintentionally_ paralyzing one of the head Dalek's tentacles. He was not overfond of cephalopods and their like, the Doctor wasn't.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, as it seemed appropriate. His Time Lord brain, after all, had been moving rather fast through that train of thought. And anyway he hadn't been expecting to encounter _Thursday Next_. She might be the closest the humans had to him--no, well, in human form, except that they were her people already--just strike that from the record already.

"Yes," Thursday replied, hefting several of his boxes, " _that_ Thursday Next. Weeds  & Seeds?" He _was_ rather proud of that detail. No one would think to look for a Prydonian in SpecOps-32, the...

"Domestic Horticulture Enforcement Agency." It seemed appropriate to start walking towards his office, and if he was reading human body language cues correctly--and, not to brag, but he had gotten rather good at that--Ms. Next intended to, "SO-32. I'm starting an office here. There's been a rise in the number of hackers just recently. The Pampas Grass Vigilante Squad are becoming more brazen in their activities; pampas grass might well be an eyesore, but there's nothing illegal in it." He purposefully neglected to mention that a danger-seeking thrill went through him at the idea of protecting a _plant_ even though that should have ended lifetimes ago, before his first exile to Terra. However, to maintain his cover as a supposed human, it only made sense to show his fake id (psychic paper, with a little... tuning) when expected, for they had reached the doors, and they were then able to ascend to the second floor where his office was located. 

"I heard something about that," Thursday noted quietly, "Any links to the Anti-Leylandii Association?"

"Nothing positive," the Doctor remarked, quick on his feet at making up a plausible cover, "but I'm following all leads." Really he hadn't the foggiest idea what the Anti-Leylandii association even was (probably something to do with Terran botany, he supposed) let alone whether it was actually connected to his cover mission, but the question didn't have the ring of a test set for an unwitting novice. She was buying him. 

With that line of discussion abandoned, she inquired, "How many in your squad?" Now that was familiar ground. 

He grinned, able to answer quite truthfully, "Including me, one." And yet, even though he was able to keep up the grin, a pang went through him at the thought that he didn't have a companion, not even an "assistant"-- _ThankYouAlistair Ahem Lethbridge-Stewart_ \--here. Of course Thursday was hardly an appropriate potential companion--she was far too brilliant in her own way to appreciate his brilliance properly, and she had her own adventures to have. "Thought you were the most underfunded department in SpecOps? Think again. I've got six months to sort out the hackers,"--which was, in a roundabout way, his true mission, rather than a cover--"get the Japanese knotweed"--and his fear thereof--"under control and find an acceptable plural form of _narcissus_." Which was still baffling to him translation-wise--he thought that was a loan from Latin, some story about a youth, and it really should have a plural ready made but then English humans were weird about loanwords, weren't they?

By this point, both of them had reached his office off the upstairs corridor, the one that had previously belonged to the SO-31 department, allegedly "Good Taste Education Authority", but one which had reminded the Doctor of an auto-show stunt of questionable judgement he had been witness to on a brief trip to an alternate universe where--alas, he had a pretty, young, blond companion (who he seemed to be in love with more than usual--what was that about?) but he had also been a far more disastrous part of a worse Time War, in which the Daleks had _never_ been loosely allied with the Gallifreyans and Rassilon had never violated the pact by executing that questionable experiment because the pact hadn't existed in the first place--oh, it wasn't fun to contemplate. Least of all because he'd been all but _alone_ there. Oddly enough, the Crimean War had _ended_ many years ago, even in the equivalent of this year, there, and the Master had not been able to seed the necessary pieces for the Chronoguard to develop. And scandalously, no one cared there about such matters of controversy as the paradoxical authorship of Shakespearean plays or the vital rock song "Johnny B. Goode"--

His reverie was interrupted by the sound of the boxes Thursday had picked up hitting the table, and she momentarily confused him by mentioning that _narcissi_ was her favorite (of _what?_ Oh. Yes. Plurals of _narcissus_.) before wishing him well. 

Huh, fancy that. He, the Doctor, wished well by _Thursday Next_. He'd have to track down Sarah Jane, maybe, and tell her that--he thought she might be active yet, because he'd heard second hand about a robot that _had_ to be K-9 in the other universe. But first he was going to see if he, a Prydonian, couldn't pull off this disguise that was really only suited for... well, it was too uncouth to mention really, even though theoretically they _were_ perfectly socially acceptable Time Lords. 

First order of unofficial business--see a nuclear power clerk about how a vaguely described ex-companion of his (it was either Tegan or Ace--he'd narrowed it down) had been read into the chaotic aftermath of fire-insurance fraud on a world that rested on a giant tortoise. That could only occur in fiction, that. It'd be nice to have a companion again; he didn't work well without one. But still the incident was inexplicable given that her book about that hadn't been published yet, and _she hadn't yet written_ about the pair of unmistakable witches he'd encountered drinking apple-based alcoholic beverages and chatting with a Christmas pantomime scarecrow that unaccountably resembled his sixth self...

How was he going to corral that in under the heading of Domestic Horticulture Enforcement? Huh, maybe it was time he did some moonlighting for SO-whatever the number was--Vampires and Werewolves, they could get away with all kinds of weird stuff, even if he'd have a hard time explaining why he needed to see that clerk...

**Author's Note:**

> ...do try to spot references to:  
>  the original _Back to the Future_ ; plants being scandalous on Gallifrey (I admit I've had this mostly secondhand from tumblr; but inaccuracies could probably be excused by how alternate this universe is); Jeremy Clarkson's attempts at car interior design; _The Colour of Magic_ ; Esme and Gytha (aka Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg) drinking scumble (well, maybe Granny's not having too much of it); and Worzel Gummidge (some twist in the Next-universe has resulted in either the Doctor's sixth self resembling Jon Pertwee or Colin Baker playing that scarecrow)


End file.
